Challenges for colleges to enhance job opportunities for their students

The colleges will have placement cell to ensure their students get into a best job after they complete the degree. They look forward to invite prestigious organizations to come for campus interviews. Organizations apart from campus interviews have tried various other models also to hire fresh talents and I could see some challenges they are facing with speed of acquiring business not going as per plan. There are different perspectives to look at the challenges all players are facing in industry - student’s perspective, college's perspective and organization's perspective. In this blog I am talking about college's perspective challenges.

The college concerned people will be thinking, which organization we should give chance first for campus interview when they approach? The one which was prompt in making reasonable offer and honoring the same last year or one which gave very good offer but failed in adhering to the commitments as in the offer letter last year? Or should we tie-up with some organization who will partner with us to ensure our student’s employment index goes up year on year? Getting prestigious organizations as preferred by students for campus interview also is another BIG challenge. What should college showcase to attract the prestigious organization to visit them for campus interview?

The colleges may look for solutions where students are taken closer to “deployment ready” kind of talent for software projects so that organizations will look at them differently when they interview during campus recruitment. As there is a constant communication from some top industry leaders from India that the academy and industry is not working together and there are gaps in skills when the engineers come out of graduation. The investment required on training engineers from the college taking time and effort for organization, delaying the business acquisition and hence the growth. Therefore college is looking for platform like Sandbox environment where students will learn in parallel along with academics, various skills required by the software industry and apply them on well designed exercises to sharpen their skills and come out confidently to face interviews.

Love to hear different views or comments from the college management community.